Posted
by
timothyon Saturday February 16, 2013 @01:33PM
from the bringing-more-silicon-to-the-valley dept.

The Chabot Space and Science Center has received numerous reports of a bright object flying through the sky in over northern California Friday night, as noted by The Washington Post, NBC, and others. According to NBC's version of the story "Chabot astronomers in Oakland said the meteor was not related to the asteroid passing near Earth. Gerald McKeegan, an astronomer at Chabot Space and Science Center in Oakland, said he did not see it, but based on accounts he thinks it was a 'sporadic meteor.' Sporadic meteors bring as much as 15,000 tons of space debris to Earth each year, according to McKeegan. He said it was likely smaller than another meteor that landed in the Bay Area in October, which caused a loud sonic boom as it fell." The eyewitness accounts make it sound pretty spectacular, though; too bad we don't have quite as many dashcams going as there are in Russia.

In Russia, they are used as evidence collectors because of all the shady folks trying to game the system. Here in the US, anyone with a dash cam is laughed at by a majority of people. I have a dash cam and people at work assume I have it to catch accidents and think it's a gruesome reason. Also, since people don't throw themselves in front of buses as much as Russians apparently do, the dashcams are not as widely used here.

I saw it through my car windshield while stopped at a traffic light at 18th and Valencia Streets in San Fran City; I have seen other meteors before and this was just like the rest, except for its bright, cobalt-blue trail.

It dropped out of sight behind Twin Peaks; there was no boom that I heard, which makes sense to me as it seemed to be traveling fairly slowly across the sky about 45 degrees above the horizon -- or it was at very high altitude.